FREE ESSAY ON WHERE HAPPINESS COMES FROM

WHERE HAPPINESS COMES FROM

Where Happiness Comes From
by Tonia L. Harmon
Their farm was two hundred acres of corn fields, 
cows, pigs, and, of course, chickens. No farm would be 
complete without chickens. At the southeast corner of 
the farm, behind the smaller corn field, was the brook 
with clear cold water that reached past my knees. On 
most weekends my family would go to visit our friends, 
the Tailors, who had at one time seven boys to keep 
them company. All of them were grown with their own 
lives to attend to, except for Dan, who stayed on at the 
farm to help keep up the crops. His younger brother Dave 
still came back to the farm, from the busy city, to visit 
and bring his children to see their grandparents. Even 
though they were about the same age as my brother and I, 
we did not play with them because they were greedy and 
didn't suit our playing qualifications by continuously 
changing rules and cheating. It was rare that we encountered 
them anyhow, and that suited us fine. Most of the time we 
would stay the whole weekend. Our parent's elected to 
sleep in a tent, while my brother and I slept in one of 
the many cozy bedrooms of the farmhouse. We loved it 
there and secretly both he and I wished that we could 
stay forever.
There were separate reasons why we loved it there. 
My brother, Forest, had a choice of over a dozen 
different old cars and trucks. Forest was allowed under 
the hoods so that he could tinker with the engines and 
figure out how they functioned. He was a ten-year old 
mechanical genius. Everyone knew that he was going to 
grow up to be a mechanic. When he was five or six, 
Forest found an old transmission behind the barn; in two 
hours he had taken it apart and put it back together 
again without prior instruction. Old mister Tailor 
watched from a distance while Forest disassembled and 
methodically assembled the transmission to its original 
form.
Our parent's are proud and still equally impressed 
as the day it happened. They still brag and carry on 
about his genius endeavor, as they do with both of us 
for the many special encounters accumulated during our 
formative years.
My reasons for loving that farm cannot be so simply 
expressed. I cannot narrow my reason into one great 
memory, and I cannot say when exactly I fell in love 
with the Tailor farm; perhaps it was from the first time 
I stepped onto the warm and inviting soil. 
There were moments when I'd get a burst of happy 
energy and run through the field with my hair flying 
behind me. The corn was at least four feet above my 
head. Running through it gave me a secret place all my 
own, like a completely separate planet that was occupied 
by only me. Most often, after playing in the corn field
I went to the bend in the brook where the deepest spot 
was, and after removing all unnecessary clothing I swam, 
pretending I was a mermaid in the ocean. I loved to 
watch my long red hair sway under the water with 
my graceful swimming motion. If the sun's ray danced on 
my hair just right, beautiful colors would stream through 
the clear utopian water.
After supper each night everyone collected on the 
large screened-in front porch. The grown-ups drank cans 
of cold Coors beer while my brother and I sipped cans of 
Sprite or 7-up. Lightening bugs danced in the near 
darkness while crickets sang to the melody. After a time 
the porch light came on and a card game would emerge for 
the men to play. My mother and Mrs. Tailor would stay at 
their seats to talk or share recipes. Forest and I 
shared the responsibility of getting cold beer from the 
kitchen keeping all satisfied. On one occasion I asked 
to join the game. Surprisingly, I was more than welcome; 
Forest was invited too but declined. He was more interested 
in finding a Mason jar to collect lightning bugs. 
I received a quick lesson in the poker game, Five 
card draw. As poker is mostly played with cash, each 
player spotted me a dollar, starting me at three 
dollars. I won the first real hand with a full-house. 
An hour later my three dollars was close to a hundred and 
I was pronounced the lucky winner. On Sunday after 
church I used that money to treat everyone to breakfast.
Leaving the farm to go back to our small town was 
difficult for me. I would cry or throw up a fuss, 
stomping my feet, and refusing to leave. The times that 
our family only stayed for the day, Mrs. Tailor would 
volunteer to keep me over for the weekend and return me 
home on Sunday after church. I think she enjoyed my 
presence because all of her children had been boys. 
On occasions when it was impossible for me to stay, Mrs. 
Tailor would give me a comforting hug, and remind me that 
next week we would be back again. Those words soothed my 
discontent and solved any other matter that I suffered.
Mrs. Tailor was to me what women on the cover of 
magazines are to most young girls today. I would attempt 
to copy how she walked; or how she would brush her long 
gray hair. I mimicked her words, as if by using them I 
would somehow be more intelligent, even if I didn't know 
the meaning of them. I even copied the way she dialed the 
phone with one of the extra rotary phones. I tried on her 
shoes prancing around pretending to be Cinderella at the 
ball or some other character from a story.
Looking back at these memories now, I realize how 
I needed to have those good memories. Later, when my 
family was torn in many directions, I depended on these 
memories to get past the pain. I constantly tried to 
soothe my alcoholic and violent parents by reminding them 
of the good times. Sometimes my efforts worked other times 
my parent=s didn't even seem to care. It was the hope of 
the future and being able to reflect upon these memories 
that put a smile on my face when things seemed unmanageable. 
I knew that happiness was possible; I had felt it before. 
Those distant but vivid memories were all I had. During 
those times, I vowed to make new memories of happiness, 
instead of wearing out the only ones I had. 
Someone once told me that happiness came from the 
inside and they were right. I wasn't able to be truly happy 
again until I found that place inside my heart and was 
comfortable with what I found. Simply pleasing others was 
not a substitute for expressing love.